Opening up to Change!

Do you have a skill that can help the technical communication fraternity in some way? Do you want to make time to do something for your colleagues in various technical communication professions? Volunteering to help out with something you believe in can be one of the most gratifying and enjoyable things you can do. In your role as a technical communicator at office, you may not have much choice. Volunteering offers you this freedom of choice. You can do what you like most, which in the end, leaves you gratified. If you are interested in active volunteering, STC is THE platform to choose what you want to do and channelize your energy to the right cause.

So what do you get in return? Something priceless. You make lot of friends and learn many new skills. You would be creating a virtual network of colleagues, peers, and seniors for yourself. So just reach out.  Go ahead and volunteer to further STC’s mission of “Creating and supporting a forum for communities of practice in the profession of technical communication.”

Can you volunteer even if you are not a STC member? Yes. Absolutely. In fact, we have more non-member volunteers in team Indus than we do member volunteers.

STC is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the art and science of technical communication. With its 25,000-strong membership, it is the largest organization of its kind in the world. With a small bunch of full-time staff and a large network of volunteers, STC constantly strives for the welfare of technical communicators worldwide by educating its members and the industry in general on issues concerning technical communication.

This year’s award of excellence winner, the India chapter of STC, with its membership of nearly 100, is making similar efforts of educating the over 1000 technical communicators of India. (Source: TWIN list membership). STC India chapter, like many other STC chapters, has no full-time staff!  If not for the network of member and non-member volunteers, the chapter would not have been able to organize the annual conference year after year, bring out the award winning newsletter Indus and successfully organize the umpteen learning sessions in various cities in the country. The combined energy of the volunteers is powering the engine of the STC India chapter. Still the chapter can do more! Whether you are a member or a non-member, it is for you to make this work.

What can you do? If the next India chapter annual conference is taking place in your city, you have unlimited opportunities to volunteer your time and skills. And even if it is not, there can be several opportunities to contribute to the conference. Contact the conference program manager and his team and they will tell you how you can help. India chapter conducts various competitions every year. If you wish to volunteer as a judge to any of these, work with the competitions manager.

Talk to your city representative to know how you can help with the STC learning sessions. Right from helping avail a venue for the session, to collecting fees and helping with the basic arrangements on the learning session day, there are innumerable voluntary activities associated with a learning session organized in your city. If you are a senior writer with useful information to share with the other technical communicators, do collaborate with your city rep and plan on a session or two. Suggest some areas of interest for the sessions and help identify the experts who can share such info with the writing community. For a beginning, attend as many sessions as you can, so that you can contribute by audience discussions and look out for and create opportunities to volunteer. More importantly talk about the sessions with your colleagues back in the company to create awareness in your company of the huge community backing you. 

If you are an experienced writer or editor, or content developer, do read all the issues of Indus and provide feedback to the editors. Write articles for Indus when solicited or otherwise. If you want to write a column, discuss the theme with the editors and work it through. If you have some suggestions to improve the layout or usability of Indus, collaborate with the Indus Layout team.

If you are a Web designer or a usability professional, you can provide active feedback on the India chapter web site to the Web master and check out how you can help with some advice or active help.

There is one essential thing you can do to enable active volunteering for yourself for the next year: interact with the current volunteers, managers, and admin council members actively during the next annual conference to be held in Chennai this December and chart out your volunteering plans for 2005. To start with, send us feedback on what we are doing and how we are doing. It will help us serve the community better and help the technical communication profession grow in this part of the world to its potential.

Subash Babu and D Vijayalakshmi